Re: Learning C with Older books ?.

From: James Dennett (jdennett_at_acm.org)
Date: 12/08/04 

Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 18:38:21 -0800

Tim Rentsch wrote:
> daniel.vallstrom@gmail.com (Daniel Vallstrom) writes:
>
>
>>Tim Rentsch <txr@alumnus.caltech.edu> wrote in message news:<kfnsm6lhnfy.fsf@alumnus.caltech.edu>...
>>
>>>Dan.Pop@cern.ch (Dan Pop) writes:
>>>
>>>
>>>>In <kfnvfbjgrvy.fsf@alumnus.caltech.edu> Tim Rentsch <txr@alumnus.caltech.edu> writes:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>Dan.Pop@cern.ch (Dan Pop) writes:
>>>>>[snip]
>>>>>
>>>>>>>From the gcc man page:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -Wall
>>>>>> All of the above -W options combined. This enables all the
>>>>>> warnings about constructions that some users consider ques­
>>>>>> tionable, and that are easy to avoid (or modify to prevent the
>>>>>> warning), even in conjunction with macros.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The following -W... options are not implied by -Wall. Some of
>>>>>> them warn about constructions that users generally do not consider
>>>>>> questionable, but which occasionally you might wish to check for;
>>>>>> others warn about constructions that are necessary or hard to
>>>>>> avoid in some cases, and there is no simple way to modify the code
>>>>>> to suppress the warning.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -W Print extra warning messages for these events:
>>>>>
>>>>>More seriously, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.
>>>>
>>>>Nothing more than the gcc documentation itself says: -Wall flags stuff
>>>>that is trivial to avoid and that many people don't like,
>>>
>>>That may be what they mean but it isn't what they say.
>>
>>They do too!-) (IMO FWIW, more or less).
>
>
> Clearly not. The documentation says "some"; it does not say "many".

Written English is not a formal language. It does not, much
though I wish otherwise, admit of a single unambiguous interpretation
in many cases.

("No language is capable of unambiguously expressing every
idea, least of all this one.")

>>>>>The -Wall includes "all warnings about constructions that some users
>>>>>consider questionable". Taken literally, this would mean that any
>>>>>construction that any user considered questionable would be included
>>>>>in -Wall.
>>>>
>>>>??? By what kind of logic has "some" become "any"?
>>>
>>>The standard rules for how English is translated into mathematical
>>>logic and predicate calculus.
>>>
>>> -Wall == { warnings w | there exists some users that consider
>>> constructs flagged by w questionable }
>>
>>Sweet! There are standard rules for translating arbitrary English into
>>a formal language!?!
>
>
> To be more exact, there are standard rules for how certain English
> constructs are understood to be formulated in the language of the
> predicate calculus. It's called Logic.

No, that's not what logic is. And indeed, even such rules as do
exist apply only in certain situations.

>>Do you have success applying the rules in daily life?-)
>
>
> Yes I do, when talking with people who have attained a certain level
> of technical education.

And people with something approaching mastery of basic
logic, coupled with good language skills, work at avoiding
applying the rules inappropriately.

>>Anyway,
>>
>> "all warnings about constructions that some users consider
>> questionable"
>>
>>clearly means something like
>>
>> all warnings about constructions that this small, specific,
>> more or less fixed, authoritative group of users consider
>> questionable.
>>
>>Otherwise it doesn't make sense since for every construct there
>>is always some luddite that finds it questionable.
>
>
> You don't mean it doesn't make sense; you mean you disagree with what
> it says.

No; it really is unreasonable to interpret the "some" there
too literally. (Clue: if a literal reading would obviously
make a sentence incorrect, it is usually the case that a less
literal, more charitable reading will give the intended
meaning. In the world of mathematics of a reasonably advanced
level, it's even common to state things which are not literally
true, knowing that the audience will realize that a literal
interpretation is not intended, and "abuse of language" is
involved to aid communication.)

> The meaning that "-Wall warns on all constructs that any user
> found questionable" is perfectly sensible even if it happens to be false.
>
> Incidentally, you can tell a lot about the quality of someone's
> arguments by their attitude toward using words like "luddite" as
> part of their arguments.

But not as much as you might invite people to believe.

>>>>You've got a set of users, "some users" and you put all the warnings
>>>>all the users from that set agree upon under -Wall.
>>>
>>>The interpretation you're suggesting is analogous to the well-known
>>>joke:
>>>
>>> "They say that in New York city a man is run over every 5 minutes."
>>>
>>> "The poor fellow!"
>>>
>>>It's possible the first person meant the same man was run over every
>>>time, but that's not the usual interpretation.
>>
>>And? It's the right interpretation in the -Wall case. It only needs to
>>be a possible interpretation, which it is --- otherwise the joke
>>wouldn't work.
>
>
> I didn't say it wasn't possible to interpret it that way. It's also
> possible to interpret it as "-Wall includes all the warnings for
> constructs that GNU developers find questionable", and I wouldn't be
> surprised if that interpretation were closer to the truth than most of
> the others that have been mentioned. But I'm not talking about how it
> should be interpreted; I'm talking about what the words literally
> say.

Wasted effort?

[snip]

-- James

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